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Go figure that a special
that fully and unabashedly embraces the true meaning of
Christmas is a misfit during its own holiday. Unlike a
production such as Christopher the Christmas Tree,
which mentioned Jesus once or twice, Hanna-Barbera's The
Little Troll Prince goes far enough to technically
classify as a religious special. So it should serve as a
warning to those readers who celebrate the season by
protesting nativity statues in public parks....this one
ain't for you.

Actually, the Christian
readers won't like it very much either. It's very slow,
very simplistic, and very, very, oh-so-very 1980's
Plush-Toy Cutesy. It runs an hour, but could have easily
been cut down to 15 minutes without losing any of the key
scenes in the plot.

Here's something you don't
hear often: nothing. For the first three minutes, there's
no spoken dialogue. Two Swedish Cabbage Patch Dolls help
their father carry a tree home, while within said home, a
really small boy decorates the attic for Christmas with
the help of his woodland animals. The first thing he
says, after the three-minute mark, is that all he needs
is a tree...which will be taken care of once the girls
get home.

He prepares for this by
sawing a hole in the floor. The tree they brought back
was so huge that its top broke through the ceiling and
became the boy's tree as well. This was, in fact,
intentional, because they know the troll is there.

Or rather, that the gnome
is there. The boy, named Bu, explains he's really a
gnome, and that gnomes are good while trolls are evil.
Gnomes live in the forest, while trolls make their
residences up in the mountains. Got it?

"For the trolls,
everything good is bad, and everything bad is good! Up is
down, black is white, and Rush Limbaugh and Rosie
O'Donnell are each other. How do I know all this?
Because, believe it or not, I wasn't always this way. In
fact, one year ago, I was the Prince of the Trolls!"
Flashback time.

The King and Queen of
Trollkind, named Ulvik and Sirena respectively, are upset
about the way their eldest boy turned out. There's only
one element of this cartoon that keeps it from being
solidly lame: the King is a two-headed troll voiced by
Jonathan Winters and Vincent Price at the same time.
THAT.....is awesome. What a concept!

Ulvik yells at Sirena,
blaming her inferior genetic material for causing Bu to
not appear as ugly as a troll should, for she
only has one head. Sirena yells at him back, claiming he
favors their other two children better than Bu. What
really sticks in King's craw is that, since Bu was the
first-born of his family (and yet shorter than his
siblings by feet), he's the Crown Prince and will rule
the Troll Kingdom someday. There must be some way to make
sure he turns out nasty and proper before it's too late!
He stomps down to Sinister School, which is the opposite
of Unsinister School.

The head of the Sinister
School, Professor Nidaros, is played by Don Knotts, and I
never would have guessed. In every other part I've seen
Knotts play, he's a wide-eyed man with a shaky, yokely
voice. He's making a completely different type of voice
this time and it works; who knew the old coot had such
range? The professor sings a song here, but it barely
qualifies as one....he flatly recites the evil deeds
trolls are supposed to take part in while a musical score
tries to make a three-note melody out of it.

Just as he's finishing his
"ditty," Ulvik kicks down the door and demands
to know what he's been teaching these troll kids. Nidaros
has a few of them recite from the Troll Bible: "Do
unto others before they do unto you!" The professor
asks them how they treat those who are different.
"SHUN THEM! IGNORE THEM!" He asks a troll what
they think of people. "People can't be trusted! They
chase trolls and step on them!"

Prince Bu meekly gets up
and recites a few of the Troll Tenets with a shaky
weakling voice. This pacifies Ulvik. "Okay, I guess
he's fine. Sit down, Bu."
"Thank you," Bu says.
And just like that, Ulvik is unpacified. "DID HE
JUST SAY THANK YOU???" The class is immediately
dismissed so the King can chew the professor out, maybe
literally.

The two younger princes,
now stuck outside with nothing to do, discuss the
situation with Bu. One wonders why they just don't eat
him -- then one of THEM would be the Crown Prince and
this whole matter would be settled. Another prince points
out their father would kill them if they tried that, and
yes, they get to use the word "kill."

"All right, how about
this?" suggests the third prince. "We can make
him get rid of himself. Here's what we'll tell
Bu....."

The three trolls run up to
Bu and say, "Have you heard the rumors about what's
going on in People-Land?" That's not one of my
quirky rephrasings; they really called it that.
"No, what?"
"They're doing STRANGE THINGS.....hanging wreaths on
their doors; outlining their houses in lights! It could
mean they're planning an invasion of the Troll
Kingdom!" There's no hint if trolls really believe
this, or if they know better and also know Bu won't.

"As Prince, it would
be your duty to investigate this!"
Bu is useless in many ways, and being too cowardly to
investigate things is one of them. "I....I don't
k-know...." he stammers out.
"Think of how proud your father would be of
you!"
Bu perks right up at that. If he alone found proof of
human invasion plans, that would prove his worth to dear
ol' Dad!

They lead him down a
mountain and to a rickety old bridge. "You first, we
insist," they tell Bu. It's obvious what they want
to happen, but the bridge holds, and then they're forced
to make it across as well. They really don't want Bu to
survive this trek down the mountain, because whether they
believe a human-troll war is imminent or not, they
definitely think any human being would kill them on
sight.

But it's not to be. Bu
avoids all the hazards easily, and since the other trolls
can't abandon him without his figuring out what's up,
they all find themselves in human territory: a Norwegian
village. "You check out that house.....see if it's
safe!" a troll says while pointing in fright. This
is their last hope for getting rid of Bu.

Bu looks inside and sees a
woman baking gingerbread men. Or are they flattened,
dehydrated and oven-crisped TROLLS?? AIIIEEEEEE!
All four run for their lives....but not before grabbing
Bu, tieing him to the top of a tree and leaving him there
to get cookie-fied. They've waited long enough. If these
humans really eat trolls, Bu won't be back to tattle on
them for this.

It isn't long before
people, one with an axe, approach the tree Bu's attached
to. They're the two girls we saw at the front end of the
special, along with their father, out to get a Christmas
tree. They cut it down and end up carting Bu inside their
house, discovering him only when they've started to
decorate the tree.

Bu demands to know what's
really going on. The girls explain they aren't planning
an anti-troll uprising, they're celebrating Christmas.
Now Bu wants to know what Christmas is about, so the pair
give him the full story: the Savior, the manger birth,
the sacrifice for the sins of humanity. They tell him God
did these things because He loves everybody. "Well,
not TROLLS -- nobody can possibly love us."

"Oh, no, God loves
everybody, including evil trolls." Upon
finding this out, if you can believe it, Bu's heart
starts beating for the first time. How was he alive
before?

Then he hears a noise
outside -- oh noes! It turns out the King wasn't fooled
by the ruse the other trolls tried to pull off, and and
now has one of his minions searching for Bu. But this
minion isn't lovable, yellow and squeaky -- he's a giant
hideous wind monster who freezes Bu and carries him off
to jail!

The other princes have
framed Bu, claiming he was the one doing the very things
they tried to do to him. Now stuck in prison awaiting his
trial, Bu has a small Bible to read to pass the time,
which was a gift from the two girls. It's here he finds
out the true Golden Rule, and as he keeps reading, his
nose starts shrinking and his tail starts shortening.....

Bu is called before the
Council of Elders, six trolls who will decide if he's
still worthy of the title Crown Prince. The other princes
and Sirena say no. The King, however, is still protective
of his boy, and insists on a full trial. As Bu stands
there on the courtroom floor, Ulvik asks him to recite
the Troll Golden Rule.

But he doesn't; he recites
the real Golden Rule instead, and the outraged court
accuses him of blasphemy. "I'm sorry," admits
Bu, "but I have a heart now! A heart that's full of
God's love! And I love everybody, and----" at this
point, if you're hungry for something edgier, try putting
on an early-season episode of Full House.

As Bu speaks of wuv, his
physical body changes further.....his tail and nose
shrink in size again, and his ears lose their points. He
turns from a troll into a gnome, right there in court.
Upon seeing that sight, even his father disowns him, and
leaves Bu to the mercy of the court. The court, of
course, has no mercy for such mush, and chases Bu out of
the Troll Kingdom and into the night.

Bu is homeless now, or so
he thinks. The next morning, after he wakes up under a
tree, some gnomes pass by and point him out as one of
them. Bu can't believe it until he sees his own
reflection in some ice. He's okay with this; he was never
much of a troll anyway. The gnome community lives in the
forest next to the girls' village, and so Bu made his
residence in their attic.

Which brings us to present
day, 1987, and Bu with his critter friends. He reminds
the audience that "this may have been a fairy tale,
but God's love is real!" The camera pans away into
the sky and the credits roll.

Why didn't it fit in?The Little Troll Prince was made explicitly for
Christian audiences, so there weren't many channels that
could show it. Despite its limited audience, there's a
lot of legendary talent behind it -- the voices of
Vincent Price, Jonathan Winters, Don Knotts, Cloris
Leachman and Rob Paulsen, the Hanna-Barbera animation,
and Andrea Romano as voice director. There's only so much
a good production crew can do with a bad script, though.

This special, combined with The
Cabbage Patch Kids' First Christmas, is now available on DVD.
Or more accurately DVD-R.